The University of Montevallo announced earlier this month that they are preparing for full in person classes in the Fall. This decision comes after bigger universities in the state announced they were returning to in person classes.

Um has been having some classes in a hybrid format, where some students are in person and others are online, and some in person classes since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, in person classes had to follow safety measures like wearing masks and social distancing.

There are currently no precautions in place for the Fall.

A big part of the decision to go back to in person classes is that there is a plan in place for everybody to be vaccinated by May. If this doesn’t happen, the University could make the decision to have classes remain online.

Dr. Rachel Jubran, an associate professor of Psychology at UM, is scheduled to teach both online and in person classes in the Fall. She thinks that switching back to full in person classes could be difficult for students.

“I think that the pandemic actually got students into a unique routine. I’ve noticed a lot of students are multitasking during classes. This has gotten them into a bad habit because they’re trying to do all of these things while going to school. And what the research shows, especially from a teaching perspective, is that if you’re multitasking and trying to work while going to class, it does have an impact on your performance unfortunately.” said Jubran.

Jubran also says there are big differences between in person and online.

“The biggest difference from the actual delivery content perspective is obviously that we’re missing that interaction with the students. That’s a big part of it.” Said Jubran.

“From the prepping perspective of getting ready to deliver content, it’s very different to teach an in person class versus an online class. So with an in person class you can kind of go through the slides and deliver content that way. But online, you’re not recording lectures of you talking and putting them up. You actually have very different prepping going into a real online class. There’s actually a lot of research for the practice of teaching online.” Said Jubran.

For more information about the University going back to in person classes. You can check out an article about it on the University Website here.